When Russian peacekeepers arrived in Nagorno-Karabakh as part of a ceasefire deal between Azerbaijan and Armenian, they found it empty, blanketed in a thick November fog. After 44 days of brutal war, most had fled, not believing the fighting was over. A year later, the region’s main city of Stepanakert is no longer a ghost town. Most of its residents have returned, followed by thousands of Armenians displaced from territories won over by Azerbaijani forces in the conflict.
The strengthening of the Russian hold over the Karabakh issue – and more generally over Southern Caucasus politics – was arguably the biggest diplomatic price Baku had to pay for the military victory in the “44 Days War” and for reconquering the territories surrounding the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave previously under Armenian occupation.
Il Nagorno-Karabakh è al centro di una annosa contesa territoriale tra Armenia e Azerbaigian che si trascina da circa 30 anni.
Lo scontro tra Armenia e Azerbaijan per il Nagorno Karabakh rischia di aprire un nuovo fronte tra Erdogan e Putin?
A series of direct contacts between Azerbaijan and Armenia have brought hope to the two countries’ decades-long impasse over Nagorno-Karabakh, a conflict that began as the Soviet Union collapsed. But while these meetings, on the heels of a change in power in the Armenian capital, bring new dynamism, much has to be done before true progress is possible.
These are interesting times for post-soviet politics watchers. Over the past months, we have witnessed several important political transitions in the region.
Abstract
The Caucasus has been defined as a “broken region” by both practitioners and scholars. Although the regional “protracted” conflicts clearly represent a stumbling block to the development of inclusive cooperation schemes, nevertheless the “broken region” interpretation seems to hide a Western prejudice – i.e. a tendency to label as inefficient or ruinous any political relations regulated by values and interests different from the Western ones.
The interweaving of statements that preceded the April 24th anniversary contributed, once again, to clarify both the nature and the scope of the dispute related to recognition of the Armenian genocide. As a matter of fact, the political and diplomatic dimensions of the dispute have clearly overtaken its historical essence. This consideration appears to be evident whether looking at the dispute from the domestic Turkish and Armenian political perspectives or, rather, from the broader perspective of Ankara's and Yerevan's international relations.